Here ever hum the golden bees.

This past Sunday, whilst walking the Vinodogs I happened to glance down at a cluster of California poppies that were flowering at the edge of the road.  It wasn't the orange-ness of the poppies that caught my eye, instead it was something in the centre of the bloom.  On closer inspection, what initially looked like a dark, shiny bead turned out to be a bee's bum.  And there wasn't just one bum, there were three all perfectly spaced around the filaments of the flower.  I peeked into the next poppy, same thing.  Then another, and another.  Again, housed within each were three bees, heads down.  So I looked inside all the blooms, perhaps 20 in total, and each one had 2 or 3 bees inside, but now some were lying on their sides.  I brought along my camera the next evening and took this photograph.
I had just recently met a apiarist at TWWIAGE, when he was hired to help relocate a rather large swarm of honey bees that had decided to take up residence just to the side of the winery's front door, so I sent my photograph to the Bee Man to see what he thought the bees were doing hanging out in the poppies.  His theory was that the bees had been out collecting pollen when they were taken by surprise by the high winds the area was experiencing at the time and had simply decided to shelter in place.  Seems like a reasonable explanation to me, I don't much like wind either.
I checked in a couple of the poppies on my walk last night and only a solitary deceased bee remained (least I think it was dead), curled up in the middle of the flower.  Hope the others got home safely.